Return of the Mack – Seismitoad/Dusknoir/Necrozma in Expanded and Yveltal/Garbodor in Standard

Hey Some1spc readers, this is Israel and I am back with another article, and if you are lost or want to try something outside the box for St. Louis Regionals, look no further! With the new set Ultra Prism becoming legal this weekend a lot of questions have been coming up before the big day and the one that's most popular, “What is the play?” Now before I go into my top choice for this weekend, let me show you what I will be talking about throughout this article:

I.Dallas Regionals reportII.Top 3 decks I think will be thereIII.Yveltal GarbodorIV.MatchupsV.Conclusion and plugs

Three weeks ago was the Dallas Regionals and I had an extremely good time in the city of Dallas. More importantly, I was extremely happy about the deck choice that I made for Dallas which was Tapu Koko spread aka Gucci Gang. I was flying Frontier and had to cram so many things like medication, clothes, and vape stuff, I could only bring one deck box with me which was Yveltal Maxies and Gucci Gang. I decided on Gucci Gang because of how much work I put into it and the fact that I had a positive Zoroark variant matchup and knew that was going to be popular, I ended up bringing it with me and was extremely happy with the choice. Here's the list if you haven’t seen it:

Gucci Gang

Pokemon (18)

3 Duskull

1 Dusclops

2 Dusknoir

3 Tapu Lele GX

2 Seismitoad EX

3 Tapu Koko

2 Necrozma GX

1 Bunnelby

1 Espeon EX

Trainers (34)

3 Professor Sycamore

2 N

2 Guzma

2 Colress

1 Ghetsis

1 Acerola

1 Teammates

4 Ultra Ball

4 VS Seeker

2 Field Blower

2 Fighting Fury Belt

2 Rare Candy

2 Float Stone

1 Special Charge

1 Super Rod

1 Computer Search

3 Dimension Valley

Energy (8)

4 Psychic Energy

4 Double Colorless Energy

I won't go into depth about the list due to it being in the last format but I would like to say that I am still considering this for the next Expanded tournament since nothing in the new set makes it completely dead and people still rely on evolving. Probably close to Costa Mesa I will write a full dedicated article about the deck and what new cards can be potentially included. Of course, if you’re eager to ask about some ideas for the deck hit me up on Facebook and I'll get to the question once I’ve got some free time.

Anyways on to the report:

R1 Golisopod Zoroark WW

R2 Toad laser Zoroark WW

R3 SableGarb WLT

R4 Gardevoir LWT

R5 Lycanroc Zoroark WW

R6 Gardevoir WW

R7 DrampaGarb LL

R8 Golisopod Zoroark WW

R9 Wailord WW

6-1-2 40th 490/400

So, unfortunately, I didn't make it to day 2 with this deck, if only I didn't tie to the Sable Garb when I got the lock on game 3 and didn’t have to face Igor with Drampa Garb I possibly could have made it. I’ll move on and learn from this and hopefully see a better result in St. Louis.

Top 3 decks to expect at St. Louis

Besides the question of “What's the play?” the second one I see is “What do you expect?” Due to it being the new set and not many results of testing besides the ARG events, it's hard to speculate what is going to be there. However, I will give you what I think is going to be there and why it's going to be there.

Buzzwole Lycanroc: This is the number one deck I think is going to be there due to how well it did in Australia and how inexpensive it is to build the deck. The deck is extremely aggressive and can win about anything if you hit the Elixirs and don't fall into a Mewtwo or Mew play. Ultra Prism doesn’t give it new stuff to work with but we’re still relying on Zoroark as a draw engine so with it having a Fighting Weakness why not play a deck full of them. The downside of this deck is that even though it hits extremely hard, if it doesn’t hit Elixirs when needed and gets retaliated against then the deck falls apart and slowly loses the game.

Empoleon: This is a new deck that comes from the Ultra Prism expansion that is hard hitting and not that hard to obtain. When I first tested the deck once PTCGO got updated with the new set, I hated it. I had the wrong build and once the Empoleon's fall apart, you are so heavily relying on the Stretchers or Super Rod to get them back and rebuild. Then Chris Taporco showed me his list and it included Splash Energy. Splash is what makes the Empoleon deck so good and it gives it what it was missing to keep applying pressure to your opponent. If the deck keeps streaming Empoleon's, it's an extreme pain to deal with. Even the Piplups with 70 hp is huge for this meta and an extreme pain for Espeon EX users. I think the deck will show up because of this and would be prepared to face at least 1 or 2 in St. Louis. The downside: it is a Stage 2 and you will get those hands that are unplayable and lose quick games. Also Cyrus and Parallel hurts the decks math so if you’re planning to play it, make sure to test against these cards.

Gardevoir: There are actually 2 other decks I considered for this 3rd spot but Gardy ranks higher than them due to fact that it's still a strong deck even with Metal coming out of the expansion. The deck has been good ever since Worlds and it’s still relevant in this format. From Australia there was the Zoroark Gardevoir variant that ended up winning the whole thing. There's new ways to play the deck and because it’s Gardy, if you don't deal with it, it just runs over anything. Gallade is for the Zoroarks which are still big in the meta. What the deck gets from the new set is Cyrus which is extremely good when paired with Sylveon. Essentially you can remove your opponent’s whole bench which is huge and it makes them fully rebuild their setup. The downside: it's a Stage 2 deck and I have seen the deck collapse if it doesn't get set up numerous times. Also if Metal just goes crazy and kills Sylveon then that's it. Good game.

Other decks that will possibly be there in big numbers are Metal and Espeon Garbodor. Metal is a new deck but didn't make Top 3 due to the fact that Garb gives it a hard time and the correct list hasn't been figured out yet. Who knows, maybe someone figures it out by Saturday but we will wait and see. Espeon Garb is another deck that I didn't mention for top 3 and because of 1. Brad talked about it in his recent article and 2. I haven't seen too much of it to the point where it's going to be a popular choice, but it could be the best play. All of these questions will be answered after this weekend and until then, let's talk about my top choice.

Yveltal Garbodor (Yes I am serious)

Yes, I am talking about Yveltal again and I did talk a good amount about it for Dallas but it got bumped for Tapu Koko. When Zoroark first came out, I thought this was the end of Yveltal. But Azul and Brad played Yveltal Garb during the fun tournament at Memphis and did well with it. This week during the chances I got to play, I was testing a decent amount of Empoleon and Silvally. They were strong choices, but just fall short on what I wanted to accomplish with the deck. So I went back to square one trying to figure out what to test and out of curiosity, I started testing with Yveltal Garb. In the first 5-7 games I was messing with the list and trying to figure out whether or not I was wasting my time or if this is actually something good. Eventually, the list I am at now seems correct and I was either winning or losing by a prize. So I asked my brother Sammy to test the list while I'm working, to see how the deck goes and to see if he's seeing the same results I am. It turns out that he did and eventually we got it down to point where a couple switches here and there will make it tournament ready for Saturday. So here's where me and Sammy are in the list and I will include details on choices and some cards I'm considering.

Thanks for reading the free portion of this article! The rest of the article can be viewed by Elite PC members only. Click on the Ultra Ball below to catch this article and become an Elite PC Member today!

SOME1SPC was created by Christopher Taporco, Dylan Bryan, Marc Albright, and Russell LaParre with the intention to provide quality competitive content for the Pokemon Trading Card Game. We're a group of friends looking to better ourselves and the community by leveling up our deckbuilding, gameplay, and knowledge.